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Letter: God, ether and psi

Published 7 April 2001

From Gregory Tingey

You held an interview on “parapsychology” and the so-called Ganzfeld experiments
(3 March, p 46). My own view is that “psi” is as great
an opportunity for self-deception and fraud in the 20th and 21st centuries as
spiritualism was in the 19th.

Consider: evolution by natural selection works, and favourable
characteristics are selected for. If there was such a thing as any form of psi,
this would give its possessors an enormous cultural and physical advantage. Even
a 1 per cent advantage would show up very quickly, as computer simulations of
eye development show.

No such advantage has been seen or detected. Therefore it is either
non-existent, or is not detectable (like the luminiferous ether, or “god” ).
Please stop wasting time, paper and effort over such nonsense. Those of us who
are rationalists have enough problems with religious loonies.

London

Issue no. 2285 published 7 April 2001

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